As well as the free bags that will be provided to every household by the Co-operative, we wanted to sell homemade bags with the Carry-A-Bag logo on them to promote the scheme. We wanted to make these with re-used material that was already in the Penistone area.
We sold lots of bags at the Gala and they will be for sale on Penistone Carry-A-Bag launch day and afterwards in some Penistone shops, so people can get one to use for shopping in Penistone instead of a plastic carrier. We are sure a lot of people will need another bag as well as the Co-operative shopper they will get free.
The money made will be split between Barnsley Hospice and Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. Yorkshire Wildlife Trust organise clear-ups of rubbish from our beaches (a lot of which is plastics) as well as protecting wildlife and wild places in our area.
Our bag making day was on Thursday 5th June, 5-9pm at St. Andrew's Church Hall, Penistone High Street. Karen from Image:IN brought designs for bags we could make, and some people formed a 'production line' with cutters, pinners and sewers. Other people made up their own bags in different styles, and the result was a mixture of all styles and types, with something for everyone! In the end, we didn't just have cakes but sandwiches and snacks as well which kept us going through tea-time!
A huge thanks to Karen at Image:IN, the sewing shop in Penistone market place! Karen came along to the event and brought patterns, equipment, thread and nice things to decorate the bags. She also repaired machines and sorted out problems and still managed to run off 6 bags! What a star!
Thanks also to Barnsley Hospice Shop for supplying curtains and other unwanted fabric, JTS Interiors for their sample books and members of the public who dropped off fabric at the Hospice Shop. We had a huge selection to choose from and still plenty more for another day!
We might need to run another bag-making workshop as we sold so many at the Gala and a lot of shops want to stock the Penistone bags. If you would be able to help us